Cultural differences
Yesterday was my last day at the English course I’ve attended for a month here in London. I can tell that I’ve learnt a lot, not only about how to communicate, but also about how people from other countries think and live. I’ve met Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Russian, German, Spanish people, etc., all amazingly different and interesting. For example I’ve found out that Oriental people know very little about world history and culture, as if they lived on a completely different planet and they weren’t allowed to see anything but a glimpse of the occidental events and way of living.
It happens that some people don’t know what Holocaust mean and what it was or they have never heard anything about JFK assination … No, it’s not ignorance as someone might have thought.. instead it seems that certain news don’t reach their ears and I can’t understand why. It’s true that we are a little ignorant about their customs and habits as well, but I remember that when I was at school, I studied world history included the Oriental one. It’s higly likely that I’m not aware how bad educated I am about their culture, but anyway it sounds weird to know anything about certain characters of the world history.
I want to underline that my aim is not to be critic! I don’t see this lack of knowledge as a fault, but I just feel amazed because I’ve always believed that some important events were known by everyone. Apparently I was wrong.
A part from this, it has been told me that in Turkey if you raise one of your eyebrow in reply to an aswer, this means you are saying “no”… Curious, isn’t it? What if a person isn’t able to do it? :)
Another strange thing is that, generally Oriental people use less facial expressions than everyone else to show their feelings. They uses a lot their eyes to make you understand something, but not so often their facial muscles. Could be this the reason why they don’t have wrinkles and they look always so young? :)
Ok, now I’m obviously joking, but it’s really funny to understand how many cultural differences there are in the world!!
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